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Recognizing Palestine, BDS and the survival of Israel

The horrors the Netanyahu government is visiting on the Palestinian people are unmasking the ugly reality Israeli liberals have tried for decades to conceal.

Anne PaqActiveStills

What is happening in European parliaments? In the last month and a half, the UK House of Commons, the Spanish, French, Portuguese and Irish parliaments have all recognized Israel’s eternal “right” to be a racist state via a much-touted recognition of an alleged Palestinian state within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the areas of Palestine Israel occupied in 1967.

These moves followed the lead of Sweden’s new center-left government which decided shortly after taking office to “recognize the State of Palestine” as part of the “two-state solution.”

As there is no Palestinian state to recognize within the 1967, or any other, borders, these political moves are engineered to undo the death of the two-state solution, the illusion of which had guaranteed Israel’s survival as a Jewish racist state for decades. These parliamentary resolutions in fact aim to impose a de facto arrangement that prevents Israel’s collapse and replacement with a state that grants equal rights to all its citizens and is not based on colonial and racial privileges.

Unlike Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who believes he can force the world to recognize a greater racist Israel that annexes the territories Israel occupied in 1967 de jure, the European parliaments are insisting that they will only guarantee Israel’s survival as a racist state within Israel’s 1948 borders and on whatever extra lands within the 1967 territories the Palestinian Authority (PA) — collaborating with Israel — agrees to concede in the form of “land swaps.”

Denmark’s parliament and the European Parliament itself are the latest bodies set to consider votes guaranteeing Israel’s survival in its present form within the 1948 boundaries only. Even neutral Switzerland agreed, upon a request from the PA, to host a meeting of signatories of the Fourth Geneva Convention to discuss the 1967 Israeli occupation only. Expectedly, in addition to the Jewish settler-colony, the world’s major settler colonies — the United States, Canada, and Australia — are opposed to the meeting and will not attend.

An exception is MESA, the Middle East Studies Association, whose members most recently voted to grant themselves the right to debate BDS, and in the process unwittingly granted the Zionists one full year to lobby and prepare to defeat a BDS resolution on which members may be asked to vote next year.

Even the Columbia University Center for Palestine Studies — which had insistently refused in April 2011 to host and sponsor a talk and book-signing by Omar Barghouti, and instead hosted a speaker on 4 April 2013 (in a closed, invitation-only event) who attacked Barghouti in an attempt to delegitimize PACBI — reversed course recently and invited Barghouti himself to deliver a lecture this month. Barghouti is a co-founder of PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

What do all these moves mean?

Israel’s liberal racists exposed

The context of these steps has to do with the recent conduct of the Netanyahu government whose impatience is exposing Israel’s liberal racist politicians — those who prefer a more patient approach to achieving the very same racist political goals — to embarrassment. The situation has become so untenable that ardent American liberal Zionists led by none other than Michael Walzer, emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, have felt compelled to act.

Walzer, notorious for justifying all of Israel’s conquests as “just wars,” and a group of like-minded figures calling themselves “Scholars for Israel and Palestine,” recently called on the US government to impose a travel ban on right-wing Israeli politicians who support annexation of what remains of the West Bank.

Whereas successive Israeli governments have shown an unyielding determination to strengthen Israel’s right to be a racist state over all of historic Palestine, they have done so through the ruse of the “peace process,” which they were committed to maintaining for decades to come without any resolution.

This strategy has worked very well for the last two decades with hardly a peep from the Palestinian Authority, which owes its very existence to this unending “process.” More recently, Hamas’ political leadership, especially the branch in Qatar, where the group’s leader Khaled Meshal is based, has also been looking for the best way to join this project.

But as the ongoing Netanyahu policies of visiting horrors on the Palestinian people persist across all of the territories Israel controls — policies that have exposed the “peace process” for the sham it always was as well as Israel’s claim to being “democratic” as a most fraudulent one — the international consensus that Israeli liberals have built over the decades to shield Israel’s ugly reality from the world has been weakened, if not threatened with collapse altogether.

Israeli liberals realize that what Netanyahu is doing is threatening their entire project and the very survival of Israel as a racist Jewish state. It is in this context that European parliaments are rushing to rescue Israel’s liberals by guaranteeing for them Israel’s survival in its racist form through recognizing a nonexistent Palestinian state “within the 1967 borders.”

It is also in this context that European governments in the last year or so have begun to speak of BDS as a possible weapon they could use to threaten the Netanyahu government if it continues in its refusal to “negotiate” with the Palestinians (the Europeans use of the threat of BDS is limited to a threat of boycotting only the products of Israeli colonial settlements in the occupied territories), that is, to maintain the illusion of an ongoing “peace process.” Herein lies the dilemma for those who support BDS.

BDS: A means or an end in itself?

The Ramallah-based PACBI has always been clear that BDS is an instrument, a means to be used to achieve strategic goals — namely an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands during and since 1967, an end to Israeli institutionalized racism inside the 1948 boundaries of Israel and the return of the Palestinian refugees to their lands and homes. In recent years, however, BDS has been transformed from a means to an end unto itself. Many of those in solidarity with the Palestinians have begun to articulate their positions as ones that support BDS as a goal rather than a means.

The recent votes by academic organizations are a case in point. While three academic organizations that voted for BDS have declared their support for the end of the 1967 occupation, only two, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) and the Association for Asian American Studies, explicitly opposed the racist policies of the state of Israel against its own Palestinian citizens.

Only NAISA’s resolution questioned Israeli racist laws and structures. The American Studies Association, by contrast, only cited the occupation of the 1967 territories, while the Modern Language Association merely censured Israel for denying Palestinian academics and students their academic freedom without condemning the occupation or Israeli state racism. MESA’s resolution did not even mention any of the goals of BDS at all.

While these resolutions are a step in the right direction, and in many cases are the result of long and fierce battles waged by members deeply committed to all Palestinian rights, they mostly fail to articulate positions that accord with all the explicit goals of BDS. Indeed, not one of these organizations mentioned the third goal of BDS, namely the right of the Palestinian refugees to return, which Israel continues to deny in defiance of UN resolutions and international law in order to safeguard a Jewish majority in the country.

As European politicians have recognized, BDS can now be used as a means to achieve ends that those who adopt it can decide on. Palestinians’ monopoly on decision-making through PACBI and the Boycott National Committee and on determining the goals of BDS is not guaranteed.

Different parties, declaring solidarity with the Palestinians, can and do dismiss PACBI altogether as only one of many international organizations that support BDS, arguing that each supporter of BDS can determine on their own whatever goals they deem fit. In short, the expanded support of BDS in the US and Europe is not necessarily an expanded support for the goals of ending Israeli racism, Israel’s occupation and the Palestinian refugees’ exile, but rather simply support for the use of BDS as a means to achieve whatever the party using it determines as the sought-after goal.

As I have written and explained since the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords, all the “solutions” offered by Western and Arab governments and Israeli and PA liberals to end the so-called “Palestinian-Israeli conflict” are premised on guaranteeing Israel’s survival as a racist Jewish state unscathed. All “solutions” that do not offer such a guarantee are dismissed a priori as impractical, unpragmatic and even anti-Semitic. The recent attempts to co-opt BDS for that very same goal are in line with this commitment.

This explains the sudden downgrading of the threat of BDS from something that is untouchable by European and American officials and liberal academics and activists — who understood its ultimate goal as one that not only refuses to guarantee the survival of Israel as a racist state, but also aims specifically to dismantle all its racist structures — to something increasingly safe to adopt by most of them, as it now can be used to secure Israel’s survival.

Palestinians and their supporters must be vigilant about this co-optation of BDS, and must recognize that with the achievement of mainstreaming also come serious risks. Unless they reaffirm that support for BDS is support for the explicit goals that PACBI had initially set, then this recent and apparent “transformation” in attitudes, which in fact is no transformation at all, will usher in a slippery slope — the end goal of which is, alas, too familiar for Palestinians to revisit yet again.

Due to the continued absence of an independent, representative and unified Palestinian liberation movement capable of articulating a coherent strategy and leading the struggle for liberation, BDS will continue, contrary to PACBI’s stated goals, to be utilized at best as a “threat” to Israel to end its 1967 occupation. This is nothing short of a smokescreen to perpetuate Israel’s other forms of colonial control over historic Palestine and the Palestinians and to preserve its institutionalized and legal racism.

Rather than call on the international community to adopt BDS without an explicit commitment to its goals, Palestinians must insist that those in solidarity with them adopt BDS as a strategy and not as a goal, in order to bring about an end to Israel’s racism and colonialism in all its forms inside and outside the 1948 boundaries.

Otherwise, BDS can and will be used to strengthen the Jewish settler-colony and the Israeli liberal project that backs it.

Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University. His latest book is Islam in Liberalism(University of Chicago Press).

Comments

he said "my government idea of democracy is change the will of the people", not once have they said recount or maybe UN voting initiative for the people of Crimea to cast their opinion just sanction and a shit load of them if I might add. That aside, a Palestine/French UN initiative is presented today and finally we can have some kind of peace, anybody voting against it or restrain from voting have to justify it by presenting an alternative and justification for doing so. Just getting the names of these entities is a victory for our cause, sorry I don't make threats I just do it.

Just to be clear -- because the article is not -- the American Studies Association's boycott vote endorses the three pillars of the PACBI call: 1) ending the occupation; 2) ending racism toward Palestinians in Israel; 3) supporting the right of return. Moreover the resolution explicitly condemns "the systematic discrimination against Palestinians" (everywhere, and not just in the West Bank, as Massad implies). It should also be noted that there are other academic associations that have endorsed the BDS call, including the African Literature Association and the Critical Ethnic Studies Association.

I just read both the boycott resolution of ASA and the council statement on the resolution. Nowhere in either document does it say it supports dismantling Israeli racism and institutionalizing a country for all its citizens. It is primarily directed against the Israeli occupation of the 1967 territories, and the persecution of Palestinian academics trying to open up the discourse. It may oppose the discrimination of Palestinians everywhere but that does not necessarily equate with a total rejection of Zionism or accepting the right to return. Indeed, reading both documents, I see no mention of the right of return. I am not saying ASA is complicit with Israeli racism. I don't think that's Massad's opinion either. Only that such calls need to be broader and more confrontational with the basis of Israeli occupation policies and discrimination - namely Zionism and its exclusion of Palestinians from the 1948 territories, let alone the Occupied Territories.

Excellent analysis by Dr. Massad. The goal of eradicating the racist state of Israel must be kept firmly in mind. Spurious international boycott support for the purpose of imposing the "two-state solution" ie the status quo, has to be exposed and opposed. There is no Palestinian state. Recognition of this non-existent entity will only carry the process of immiseration and oppression further along the colonial path. Israel is the problem. Democracy, not racist ethnocracy, is the solution- one country, one state, for all its people.

Those (often well-meaning) liberals and progressives, inside Israel and outside, who advocate a ”Two-State” solution fail to recognize an alternative, based on the idea of equality for all, on the separation of state from religion, and on an end to discrimination and racial apartheid; a One-State solution : LIBERATED PALESTINE !http://mpbondblog.wordpress.co...

I agree with the analysis (and conclusion) and absolutely love the phrase "Israel's right to be a racist state" which I will heist. HOWEVER, confusion reigns on the BDS/PACBI goals and I believe it hurts the cause.
At www.bdsmovement.net/call it says "1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall".
At www.bdsmovement.net/bdsintro it says "1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall".
At PACBI (http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate...) it says one of the 3 goals is to remove the "Military occupation and colonization of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza since 1967, in violation of international law and UN resolutions".
The question is, is it only the West Bank and Gaza (and the Golan) that are 'occupied' and whose evacuation by Israel is being demanded? Or is Israel in truth occupying all of historic Palestine (I take this latter view)?
PACBI goes on to say "We, Palestinian academics and intellectuals, call upon our colleagues in the international community to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel's occupation, colonization and system of apartheid". That is, here the refugees are not mentioned at all!
I support all these goals and tactics absolutely, but a unified language would be welcome. Would not perhaps some re-editing be worth it? Thanks.

Let me start off by saying that I support the three goals of the BDS movement. Let me also say that those goals are perfectly compatible with a two state solution, and in fact some of the Palestinian civil society groups who are founding members of the BDS movement support a two state solution. So those who want to replace the State of Israel with a one state of Palestine are welcome to support the Palestinian BDS movement but do not speak in its name. In fact, the goals are formulated as to assume the existence of a State of Israel, though not as the ethnically exclusivist state that it currently is. A truly democratic Israel that views itself as a state of all its citizens -- which is not how it views itself today -- and which offers Palestinian refugees to return to that state is perfectly compatible with the three goals of the BDS movement. Those who are unhappy with that may take it up with those who speak in the name of that movement (I am not one of them; I just read their website.)

Prof. Mossad worries that the BDS movement might be coopted by liberal Zionist BDS that focuses only on the Occupation. I understand his concern, but I don't share his conclusion. On the contrary, since there is no chance at all of the a two state solution, the focus on the Occupation allows many people to see that the Occupation is only a symptom of the century plus mainstream Zionist policies towards the Palestinians. It is an important first step, and, wisely, the global BDS movement appears to understand that. Otherwise, they would not celebrate the limited BDS victories on their website. Instead of taking an all or nothing approach, I hope Prof. Massad's views the educational opportunities provided by an occupation-focused BDS for some. The first step they step will be followed by others.

Briefly, I ask myself: 1) If the occupation (of lands occupied in 1967) is ended, there is a Palestinian state (statelet). 2) If Palestinian citizens of Israel get treated exactly-exactly like Jewish citizens, then Israel (80% of historic Palestine) is, within those borders, a democratic state. 3) If all refugees/their descendants are allowed to return or accept compensation, then justice has been done for them. The result would be TDS: Two Democratic States. If that is what you mean by BDS's being 'consistent with a two-state solution', then OK. But what on earth would argue for their being 2, rather than a unified, state?
Thanks, Blake

Blake, let me start with the PA's Husam Zumlot's statement in the New Yorker:

"For the last forty-seven years, there’s been an international consensus about a two-state solution,” he went on. “So how do you throw that away? Can you? Why would I as a Palestinian want to compromise my nationality—and heritage and identity and distinctiveness—and then create a hybrid identity when I see the fate of the Palestinians in Israel? Look at their fate. Look at them in recent weeks. Sacked from workplaces. Verbally assaulted. In their own state! When the Israeli foreign minister”—Avigdor Lieberman—“comes out and says, ‘I want to get rid of these people, through transfer, or exchange,’ excuse me, do I want willingly to live under such a culture and mind-set and state? No, I don’t. There is no glimpse of hope of being an equal citizen under such an ideology. Israel has not moved to the right. It has gone to a madhouse! Why would I want to serve an Israeli flag or vote for the Knesset or serve in the Israeli Army?”

Now, obviously, he was referring to the non-Democratic Israel of today, and not one that had real equality for its Arab citizens, not one that replaces the present regime. But there would still be six million Israeli Jews, many of whom are Jewish nationalists, and Palestinians can reasonably fear that they will constitute a lower class in such a stat , even they obtain equal rights. And they would have to share power with the Zionists, creating a hybrid national identity.

Small wonder that in a recent poll by Shikhaki, Palestinians increasingly reject both a two-state solution and a one-state solution with equal rights for Jews and Arabs. Given the legacy of the last several generations, what many Palestinians want is simply to get the Israeli Jews out of their lives, to let them alone, even if it is in a truncated land, at least as a first step.

Anyway, i am not saying that one solution is better than the other, and I can't really speak for Palestinians.

Dear Jeremiah,
I never quite understand these disclaimers by Palestinian supporters that, as you say of yourself, they 'can't really speak for Palestinians'. Doesn't this just go without saying? Is there some projection going on? Doth the man protest too much? To say, as a non-Palestinian, that one is 'for' the One Democratic State solution is simply to say one finds the solution most consistent with universal rights and that one is supporting those Palestinians and Jewish Israelis who support the ODS solution.
I supported those black (and white) South Africans who were for 'one man, one vote' without anybody's worrying about my 'speaking for the (black) South Africans'. It makes no difference if ODS supporters amongst the future citizens of that single state are now in a minority or not. I'm supporting them.
If someone could show me that a majority of Palestinians (yes, of all of them!) wanted as a definitive solution a statelet consisting of the West Bank and Gaza - no right of return, no concern about the Palestinian citizens of Israel - I'd not spend a lot of effort on solidarity with them. I would find that solution a real shame; it would leave me cold. I guess I'd just keep on supporting the minority that still wanted rights for all Palestinians.
So I don't know why it is seen as 'speaking for the Palestinians' to support the democratic, non-partitioned state. What's more, You and I simply don't have the power to speak for them! To 'speak for' someone presumes, you have the authority to, that you've been empowered to. We aren't colonialists who can impose a solution but tiny members of civil society.
An even worse phrase is that 'we shouldn't tell the Palestinians what to do'. Think about it: How can anyone 'tell' Palestinians what to do when the Palestinians don't have to listen to a word he says?
I wish we all would get away from such diversions and get down to arguing the pros and cons of the various solutions and do our BDS work.

This reply will be shorter, I promise.
As you yourself say, Zumlot is painting false alternatives: either today's misery, or two states, or some single apartheid, oppressive state (more or less equals today's misery).
But the vision of one democratic state is... that it's democratic. So it is not entirely clear to me, as they say, why you quote Zumlot at length.
The most we can all ask for is a state where we're equal before the law - and there's no guarantee ever. So it is likewise unclear to me what the inequalities you hint at with the term 'lower class' have to do with this search for a political solution.
The polls you refer to showing support for any old Bantustine: I'll bet they polled only Palestinians in WBG. No?

Would such a democratic state do away with imigration restrictions and pass laws (borrowing from S.A.) whereby Palestinian families are kept divided and Jews without personal history are granted citizenship?

Blake, I only speak for myself, and I certainly can disagree with the way some people have their self-determination, on human rights and on other grounds. But all I saying that it is largely up to the Palestinians to decide what is best for them. That's called self-determination. If that's trivially true, it still need to be repeated, because you would be surprised how many people in the world want to decide the Palestinians' fate for them.

The key issue is a struggle inside of Israel. BDS should link with struggles inside Israel whether they are big enough or not. What matters is that there is a need for a united democratic front for a single state inside Israel.
Jewish Israelis should engage in a struggle for a civil state of its citizens and not a Jewish state. They should make common cause with Arab citizens of Israel who fight against discrimination in housing, education, employment and work opportunities. Internally displaced citizens should fight for their right of return since 1948 to places like Ikrit. Their struggle should also join the Arab members of the Knesset who would use the limited space that they have to advance these matters in the Knesset. In the prisons the fight should be advanced against illegal detentions without trial. That would disrupt the Israeli political consensus. It will also provide the fulcrum for the organisation of struggles in the occupied territories, the refugee camps and the diaspora. It would then provide a strategic orientation for BDS. BDS by itself can be a diversion. However, as part of a broader struggle for a single state of its citizens it can make a huge difference.

My impression of the Jewish movement in Israel that supports Palestinian rights is that they are very small and very maligned and intimidated. Honest and open discourse within Israel seems to be severely curtailed in the current rabidly racist environment. But, yes, I agree that the courageous voices coming from inside the beast is an important component.

A virtue of the BDS movement is that although it arises out of Palestinian civil society it calls for partnership with non-Palestinian constituencies, including Israelis who support the three calls. Forging a coalition with pro-Palestinian, pro-justice Israelis, following the model of South Africa (to some extent) is key, since even though some Jews may leave, most will stay -- and they have to be convinced of the virtues of regime change, and the costs of maintaining the current regime.

The idea of the South African model is contentious amongst some Palestinians. It is important that we learn from one another and to invoke examples from elsewhere does not imply the imposition of models of struggle.

However, it should be uncontroversial to both Arabs/Palestinians and Jews that they have to find one another in the struggle for a common future, whether that future lies in a single or a two-state solution. I do not believe that a two-state solution will bring peace to either community. The international consensus has been but a fig-leaf to the Palestinians whilst facts have been created on the ground. The fight is over the remaining 22% of the land of historic Palestine. The West Bank leadership is implicated in the colonial dispossession, disinheritance and expulsion of their people. At the heart of the struggle lies the right of return. The fears, imagined or not, of the Jewish community are irrelevant to the individually held right of return of refugees and their descendants. Every Jew, who wants peace and or justice has to recognise that fact. Failure to do so on their part will not result in the nullification of that right whether the international community continues to turn a non-seeing eye and non-hearing ear or not.

Every non-racist Jew should recognise that the right of return is key to continued Jewish life in historic Palestine. Civilisations come and go. For as long as Palestinians are denied their right of return this fight will continue whether the quisling West Bank leadership sells out or not.Recognition of the right of return will change the nature of the political discourse in Israel. How can it be that internally displaced people from 1948 are not allowed to return to their historic villages in a state that calls itself a democracy? How can it be that a state that is the only democracy in the area does not permit house extensions for some of its citizens whilst allowing illegal settlements, protected by the IDF?

I'm not sure that I agree with the author's interpretation of the votes in favour of recognition of Palestine as a state. I could be wrong, of course.

I have long regarded a two-state solution is a Zionist ploy and harmful to Palestine, as the author seems to assert. As I recall (unless I recall wrongly), the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) was in favour of the vote in UK for recognizing Palestine as a state. My understanding was that this vote was symbolic and was intended to give more weight to all claims for redress and justice by the Palestinian people. It would at least be a rebuttal of the cruel and clearly bogus assertion of Golda Meir that there is no Palestine people.

A litmus test for desirability of any policy could be to note if Israel is in favour of the said policy. This test could go wrong if Israel dissembles which, of course, it is adept at doing. Israel assumed a posture of opposition to the recognition of Palestine as a state. Assuming this posture was genuine, that would seem to indicate that recognition of Palestine as a state is good for Palestine. It hardly needs to be stated that what Israel wants will invariably be to the detriment of Palestine.

I feel that in the UK at least, the MPs voting in favour of recognition of Palestine were sincere supporters of, or sympathizers with, Palestine.

Those are my reservations about the article. But I agree with what I take to be the main thrust of the article which is that a one-state solution should be top of the agenda, that a 'two-state solution' would not a just or desirable solution, and that we need to guard against compromising the stated purposes of BDS, namely, (quoting from the article) 'ending Israeli racism, Israel’s occupation and the Palestinian refugees’ exile'.

So, with said reservations, the article is, in my opinion, a worthwhile contribution.

I think you are missing the point of Massad's critique. Massad is arguing that a truly just solution to the Palestinian issue is recognizing their right to return to their homes in 1948 Palestine (what is today Israel). Recognizing Mahmoud Abbas' "Palestine" at the UN only reifies the two-state solution and deprives Palestinian refugees living abroad of this right. Hence why such a vote would not be in the interests of Palestinians.

I do get the point, but would not go so far as to deem it more in the interest of Zionists to have a two state solution than the status quo, if that were so, they'd be opposing it. I also agree that the two state solution would run short of fulfilling Palestinian aspirations fully, but I think that it would still be preferable to the status quo, and that the Zionists also realize this, i.e. that they'd prefer the status quo to the setting up of a Palestinian state, even a reduced and weakened one, hence the opposition to the UN proposal. I do, however, agree with the contention that Netanyahu & co. are indeed trying their utmost to diminish any chance of a viable Palestinian state. Hopefully things will not work his way and I similarly hope that the ICC bid goes better.

Blake, it may be that the political framework of choice for some Palestinian intellectuals and their leftwing supporters is a secular democratic state, of the sort that Ali Abunimeh proposes. You may think that this is the best regime for Palestine. I am simply telling you that there are Palestinian civil society organizationsthat you do want to see the Palestinian people share power with six million plus Israeli Jews even in a One Democratic State of Palestine because they are *Palestinian* nationalists and not leftwing post-nationalists. You can't wish away that large Israeli population, close to 20%, by the way, is religious, and many more traditional. And because I am very sympathetic to Palestinian nationalism, the One Democratic Staters have to convincingly allay the fears of these Palestinians that their idenity will be submerged in such a state. And, by the way, the genius of the BDS movement is that it doesn't waste its time with these issues, but hews closely to the Three Calls.